Yahoo made the Tumblr Acquisition Official

All this news needs is a statement from Yahoo and Tumblr to make it official and it seems that’s what Yahoo did in a press conference that was held in New York.

Here’s what Yahoo said…

Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business. David Karp will remain CEO. The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.

With more than 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups every day, Tumblr is one of the fastest-growing media networks in the world. Tumblr sees 900 posts per second (!) and 24 billion minutes spent on site each month. On mobile, more than half of Tumblr’s users are using the mobile app and do an average of 7 sessions per day. Its tremendous popularity and engagement among creators, curators and audiences of all ages brings a significant new community of users to the Yahoo! network. The combination of Tumblr+Yahoo! is expected to grow Yahoo!’s audience by 50 percent to more than a billion monthly visitors, and to grow traffic by approximately 20 percent.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer even opened her own Tumblr account to deliver the news herself, expressing her “delight” on the acquisition, repeating the message that Tumblr will remain independent and “promise not to screw it up”.

We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve. Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster.

And it’s the same message that Tumblr CEO David Karp is sending to the Tumblr Community, that’s unhappy to hear the news of the acquisition, saying…

We’re not turning purple. Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve – certainly isn’t changing.

It’s just a matter of time whether Yahoo will be true to their words and not mess up Tumblr, like what they did (or did not do) to Geocities and Flickr. The only comfort that Tumblr users take from all of this is that the Yahoo that messed up Flickr and Geocities is different from the Yahoo that bought Tumblr is a world-apart because of its current CEO Marissa Mayer.